Important: If you're still having issues with the Plague Quarter, check out this post.Patch Alert: A patch was deployed earlier today to Hearthstone. It added support for Windows 8 touch devices!

Ben Brode Developer Interview: "Next, We're Planning for a Larger set of Cards"

Ben Brode was on the Turn2 Podcast this afternoon to discuss the development side of Hearthstone. We've watched and summarized the interview for you below. If you'd like to watch it in full, head on over to the Turn 2 #30 Twitch VoD.

If you want something added to Hearthstone, talk about it to let the developers know! Observer mode is being added because the community wanted it.

There's no current plans to change cards. The team wants to change things as little as possible, they'd rather add new cards to counter them.

Naxxramas design timeline:

Design the cards which will be rewarded from the adventure.

Create the normal boss fights. Most time was spent here.

Make class challenges and create fun decks for each class.

The Heroic fights. How do we make these crazy while keeping them beatable.

Alexstrasza being denied on Loatheb was good and bad. It was great because it changes things up and makes it fun, but there's a drawback where the visibility of this mechanic wasn't good so you might craft a card like Alexstrasza to beat the fight, but then be punished for it.

Maexxna is a potentially scary card. They wanted to keep her attack low to prevent her from being overpowered.

Loatheb was created to be a meta-game tool to be good against decks which run lots of spells.

Webspinner is a great example of randomness being important, and when used correctly, it increases the skill required to play the game. You have to adapt on the fly to what card it presents you.

During the creation of the Naxxramas card set, no cards were specifically changed based on arena performance.

At the moment, it's too tough to say if Zoo is a problem. We need to see how Naxx changes things up and the game needs to settle down before any conclusions can be made.

Deck Spotlight: Spark's Beasty Tactics

In today's deck spotlight we're taking a look at Spark's newest Naxxramas hunter deck, Beasty Tactics. This deck is a midrange Hunter deck which incorporates some secrets play for powering up Eaglehorn Bow, Unleash the Hounds for surprise damage, and those awesome Webspinners which can shake things up a bit every game.

The deck is affordable, even on the smallest budgets, coming in at 820 arcane dust (as of posting), and certainly packs a large punch for that price. Check out the deck below if you'd like to get crafting it or head on over the the deck guide to learn more about Naxxramas midrange hunter changes, card strategy, and tips to push this deck as far as it will go.

Military Quarter Heroic Boss Guides

If you need help with the Military Quarter bosses, on normal or heroic, we've got plenty of proven deck lists you should check out!

World Cyber Arena: $190,000 Hearthstone Prize Pool

A new tournament has been announced for Hearthstone which will be taking place at World Cyber Arena 2014. The tournament will feature a ~$190,000 USD (1.2 Million RMB) prize pool, which is only a small portion of the ~3.2 Million USD (20 Million RMB) total prize purse for the event. Hearthstone's first place champion will be taking home close to $95,000 (600,000 RMB) in prize money.

Information on qualifying or who's being invited has not yet been disclosed, and there is also no information on the format which will be played. The tournament is scheduled to take place on October 2, 2014 in Yinchuan, China.

More Plague Quarter Issue Fixes

Natryndon made a post on the forums early this morning stating that several fixes were made last night to fix accounts which are still effected by the Plague Quarter issues. Below you will find steps which may fix your account if you still have issues purchasing the Plague Quarter. If you are still having issues, you can respond in this thread on the Battle.net forums.

As you may know, we implemented several fixes during the night which should have ‘straightened out’ those affected (i.e. refunded the required gold and unlocked access to purchase again). However, we are still seeing a smattering of on-going cases and we wanted to address these here.

If you have not received any refund at all: Please exit the game and logout of Battle.net completely. Then, reset your Battle.net account password on the website and try again. If this doesn't work, please post below.

If you have received a refund but are still unable to make purchases: As above, please exit the game and logout of Battle.net completely. Then, reset your Battle.net account password on the website and try again. If this doesn't work, please post below.

If you have been refunded gold but you believe it is not enough: We are looking into these cases and will advise you further in due course.

If you made a real money purchase on the iPad and have not been refunded: Please contact Apple.

As someone who worked at the WCG Grand Finals for from 2004-2013. Brad Lee was the CEO of it all before they closed up shop. Now the Tournament director Kyle from WCG (WeCG) and Brad Lee (WCA.... which since he has backed out of). Have tried to make their own versions of the World Cyber Games. Not sure how telling that one of the main guys has already backed out of it.

The game selection for WCA just looks awful right now, WeCG i think is going in a better direction with that... but when the official WCA website has "a really hot Chinese actress will first appear in the press conference as WCA celebrity endorser." They have no idea how to run things and i can no longer take them seriously.

Oh my god alextraza can't be used against loatheb??Well I learned this just now,though I was thinking about using her but she is a 9 mana drop so with loatheb's passive you can't even get to that turn.Also guys can we all post everywhere for blizzard to see that we want in-game achievements?And I am not talking about daily quests or the hidden ones but achievements like:win 1,10,25,50,100,250,500,1000 duels against each class etc with rewards on them I would really strive to complete them all!

I do feel that Zoo is going to get a lot more interesting in the next couple weeks. Coin > Undertaker > Zombie Chow will be as thing, giving Zoo more chances at a really strong start. However, I feel as if in the future either Zoo wil get more inconsistent OR will will have two types of Zoo: The current version and a more Deathrattle focused type of Zoo (Death Zoo, if you will).

The most important thing is when will the new cards come out! (future expansions) I hope it will not take more than 4-5 months for something new, or if they develop a big expansion (like 80+) new cards then 7-8 months will be ok..

There should be a daily or instantly updated leaderboard for the top 100 Legend players on each server built into the Hearthstone client. Its dumb that people dont know who the top players are on each server, and have to ask streamers in chat who exactly is currently the top 16 each season. And it should include tabs for all 3 servers. You shouldnt have to log out off one server just to check if youre still top 100 in another.

Also, the top 200 legend players on each server should not fall to rank 16 with the rest of us when the season ends. They should be placed at rank 5 instead. Its not fair for them to have to grind all the way back up again. Its also a tall task to fill considering they have to make time and often travel for a lot of tournaments.

And I want mulligans to be shown simultaneously. You should only see how many cards your opponent replaced after youve already confirmed your own mulligan. Its so annoying that players are taking the full mulligan time in the hopes that you mulligan wrong. Just hide that information from players until after theyve both mulligan-ed.

I don't see why top players matter, I'd rather have blizzard put energy into more important things. And legend players shouldn't get the advantage of starting at rank 5 because 1: it's very unfavorable for other players, newer players, and 2: rank 5 at new season would be like playing in legend, since only legend would be there and there would be a gap between rank 16 and 5.